http://www.americaspower.org/

and the NRDC made this elaborate parody:

http://www.americascoalpower.org/

Brilliant.

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You can listen to it here.

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I also noted on their website that they seem to be pretty critical of Nader, that he is not doing constructive things for the independent movement — I agree.

Update: John Opdycke from CUIP got in touch with me and clarified CUIPs relationship to the effort in North Carolina:

The Committee for a Unified Independent Party did not endorse Barack Obama, but rather is providing political and financial support to a longtime independent activist in North Carolina, Tyra Cohen, who has initiated an organizing effort entitled “North Carolina Independents for Obama.” Several of CUIP’s state affiliates have endorsed Obama; others have chosen not to make presidential endorsements but to focus on crucial political reform and base building efforts.

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http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZxjdcAibnoo

Wouldn’t it be nicer of they were more like this?

http://youtube.com/2008/03/20/david-letterman-battlestar-galactica-top-10-list

Well, I’ve made a new tool to do just that. Introducing: titleurl.com.

http://youtube.titleurl.com/2008/03/20/david-letterman-battlestar-galactica-top-10-list

Enjoy.

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I do have another Chase credit card, which is my primary card, so maybe the system told the guy “this is a good customer anyway, don’t piss him off”.

At any rate, maybe things are changing? Maybe we can look forward to a brighter, nicer future, where companies respect customers and customers don’t fear calling customer service?

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update: audio file from when the wrong numbers were announced

In chronological order. Newest updates are at the bottom. Last updated 9:31 pm, eastern

– 9:10 pm –

• it’s pretty nuts - lost sign in sheets, ad hoc procedural decisions, etd.
• in the beginning, everyone was told they could sign in (indicating the candidate) and then leave
• if they didn’t want to be a delegate
• [my wife] did, so we stayed
• then, when the initial count of hillary voters for one of the precincts was off by an obvious order of magnitude… [update: see audio file above]
• now we’re doing resolutions
• 1 - impeach bush/cheney
• (didn’t see that coming)
• anyway - a bunch of signup sheets were missing
• and the chair suggested that we allocate the delegates based on who was still here (!)
• (a bunch of folks had left - I would have if not for [my wife])
• but then someone came out of the back with a bunch of sheets
• and they’re still counting
• there was zero control over the sheets
• so I don’t think we can be too confident
• - next resolution has to do with inaccurate vote counts in the past - hehe

– 9:20 –

• rats - hillary took both precincts
• but by a narrow margin
• the total vote counts sounded sane
• hundred twenty something total for one precint, hundred two for the other - but i’m going to count
• about 100 still in the room - makes sense to think about that many left
• back into 4 groups - one O & one H for each precinct
• now voting on delegates, after hearing resolutions
• there’s usually no competition for delegates.
• right now a green party convert is stumping to become an obama delegate
• our precinct gets 5 delegates for obama, and 12 people signed up for it ([my wife] among them)
• we also get 5 alternates (makes sense), and so the delegates are expressing which they want to be
• looks like we pared down to 10 and agreed to split off the alternates
• no vote needed, and [my wife]’s a delegate - we’re taking off (baby’s cranky)

Josh had this to say after he got home:

• John: well… from what you told me it seems like some pile of sheets came from nowhere
• John: magically
• yeah — someone had stashed them in the back
• John: or at least– they could have been pre-processed by some party before they made their reappearance
• there were enough signers present, and the sheets were in plain sight…
• that it would have been foolish to try large fraud, I imagine
• but the control really wasn’t there — one or more sheets could have been lost
• all the addresses and voter reg (or drivers license) numbers will be verified
• so from that perspective, it’s probably better than those damn machines we used for the primary :)

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Long line, cute kid.

I guess this was on the building of the polling location.

Long line, stroller containing presumably cute kid.

I don’t know what this sign says but it suggests enthusiasm. It says “precinct 119, dems”

More long line.

Flags: US, TX (as high as the US…), and probably Little Elm

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His stance against the war

Obama was against the war before it began, has criticized the war since then, and is now running a campaign centered around ending the war. All the way through he has spoken the plain truth about it: (a) there was no compelling evidence that there were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (b) we should have been focusing our military efforts on quelling terrorist networks (c) we need to work on improving our reputation and relationships with other countries and cultures in order to not incite terrorism in the first place.

His meta-policies

Reading Obama and Clinton’s policies side-by-side, one will discover that they are pretty similar. I happen to think that Obama’s are presented much more clearly and intelligently on his website, and smack of greater sophistication and detail, but it is arguable that this has more to do with audience targeting than with the quality of the goals and final details of the policies themselves.

What really impresses me about Obama, and sets him apart from Clinton, are his “meta-policies”, if you will; his policies and goals about government.

Obama wants to make our government more transparent, more accessible, and more accountable. To this end he has done the following work while in the US Senate:

• Introduced the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which requires the full disclosure of all entities or organizations receiving federal funds beginning in fiscal year (FY) 2007 on a website maintained by the Office of Management and Budget (http://www.usaspending.gov/).
• Put together, with Russ Feingold, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, which amends parts of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995. It strengthens public disclosure requirements concerning lobbying activity and funding, places more restrictions on gifts for members of Congress and their staff, and provides for mandatory disclosure of earmarks in expenditure bills.
• Introduced the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections, including fraudulent flyers and automated phone calls, as witnessed in the 2006 midterm elections

(Not all have passed. Click through to see current status of each piece of legislation. Descriptions lifted from Wikipedia and slightly modified.)
Now, during his campaign, he has an incredibly impressive set of policies on using technology to improve government transparency and accessibility. I could give you an overview, or I could just direct you to Lawrence Lessig’s fantastic piece on why he supports Obama, which mostly addresses technology and transparency. In a nutshell: Obama wants to make government information and information as easy to access as your favorite blog. On top of that, he has the most sophisticated position on Net Neutrality. (quick definition of Net Neutrality: not allowing the phone/cable company to charge you more to access some websites vs. others, which is what they want to start doing.)

Previously mentioned here: this fantastic lecture Obama gave on  government accountability, transparency, and ethics.

His style of politics

Obama has run an extremely long and beautiful grassroots campaign. He has established an extremely impressive network of paid staffers in most (all?) states. He has engaged his supporters using accessible and innovative online tools. He has the best website, by far.

He has not accepted any lobbyist contributions. (see extensive discussion of this topic here).

He has been able to spool up and sustain an enormous, million-dollar-a-day, grassroots fundraising machine.

Only 10 percent of Clinton contributors did not donate the legal maximum $2,300 for her primary campaign. In contrast, only three percent of Obama donors gave the maximum. The rest of the cash came from small sums from many more people. (source)

He has completely refrained from what, to my understanding, most people would call “negative” campaigning / mud slinging. As of a couple weeks ago, the Clinton campaign can’t say the same…

That’s why Obama is such a different candidate to me. I’d love to hear what folks out there think about the differences (or lack thereof) between the two candidates, if I am buying into hype, or if I am missing some important points.

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But I don’t understand what it means to accept money from a lobbyist. A conversation I just had with my friend Ryan:

John: so the obama campaign says they do not accept lobbyist contributions
John: it is my understanding that organizations/companies cannot contribute to a campaign anyway
John: how is it that lobbyist can contribute to a campaign?
John: from the human’s own pocket, in a grey-market way of getting a commercial money to a campaign?
John: or is there a separate system.
Ryan: hmm… I don’t know much about that
Ryan: I remember the whole “swift boat veterans for truth” thing from the last presidential election, where advertisements for bush were paid for by a third-party organization not affiliated with his campaign, so that is definitely one way to do it.
John: ah yes.
John: that is completely different though
John: those people were “independent”
John: lobbyist contributions go directly to a campaign, in a legal way
Ryan: Often companies will “encourage” employees to contribute to the company’s selected candidate
John: right
John: still not lobbyists.
John: (i think)

Then Ryan found this, which states:

PACs get their money not from the sponsoring group’s treasury, but from its members or employees. That arrangement neatly bypasses federal laws that prohibit direct contributions.

Which seems to suggest Ryan was right about the companies encouraging their employees. Is this the whole picture?

• All money-offering lobbyists represent PACs
• PAC members are easily identifiable
• Obama rejects money from PAC members
• Clinton accepts money from PAC members

According to this article, the answer is no:

While refusing money directly from federal lobbyists, who get their income from clients, Obama takes money from those clients.

[snip]

“If you cannot be completely pure, is it worth it to be partially pure? That seems to be debatable,” said political scientist Bruce Cain, director of the University of California Washington Center, based in the nation’s capital.

“We cannot say his policy is completely meaningless,” Cain said. “But it doesn’t insulate him from interests.”

I don’t know anything about the lobbying system — it seems that this article is saying “the lobbying system has many layers, and Obama is only opting out of contributions from the very first layer”.

The article mentions: “Obama still received 68% of his money from donations of $1,000 or more, compared with 86% for Clinton.” (this goes along with the NY Times quote I mentioned a few paragraps ago).  I wish the article gave Obama more credit for running a very different campaign from Clinton, but I can see how one could say that the Obama campaign is being less than cut and dry with its “accepting money from lobbyists” language.

On the other hand– maybe the Obama campaign is doing something that no major campaign has done for decades? Is this the case? Does anyone out there know the answer?

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Good stuff. I myself am not aware of how cut and dry that is though (no Al Qaeda in Iraq until after the war began). Anyone know of a report/study/article that demonstrates this?

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ObamasResume.org aims to put together a simple and complete description of Barack Obama’s career, which will be useful for Obama supporters to show their Clinton supporter friends. Anyone may edit this wiki.

The content is a little sparse right now — but that’s why it’s a wiki! Head on over and help me fill it in, so that we can start sending it around to our well-meaning-but-tragically-uninformed Clinton-supporter friends in Texas, Ohio, Vermont, Rhode Island, Wyoming, and Missouri.

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– The Democratic Take: From Top to Bottom — The Caucus — New York Times Blog

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I guess I was wrong.

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